A phimosis is a tight opening at the end
of the foreskin which prevents full retraction.

This inability to move the foreskin back
and forth over the glans can produce discomfort when you masturbate as the
foreskin remains stretched and tight. It can also hamper the smooth movement of
the penis in and out of the vagina during sex - the normal movement of the penis
in the vagina is assisted by vaginal lubrication and by the easy gliding of the
penis shaft within its sheath of skin.

Furthermore, there is the loss of
sensation from the glans while you enjoy sex, since it remains covered by the
foreskin at all times.

It follows also that the smegma which a
man could normally wash out from under his foreskin will simply collect there
and perhaps produce a slight hygiene problem.

In some cases, men stretch the foreskin
back over the coronal rim and it remains there, unable to naturally move forward
again.

This can be serious, because the blood supply to the glans is then
hampered by the constricting band of tissue. In the worst cases, the blood
supply is completely occluded and the glans and foreskin may turn necrotic.

Many men find that a tight foreskin and
a phimotic ring are distressing, and wish to do something about it.

If this is the case for you, remember that the
foreskin may not naturally separate from the glans until the age of 15 or so
(although this is admittedly rather unusual).

It's also natural for the foreskin to balloon up
when you urinate - and that is especially true in little boys, whose foreskin
may not begin to separate from the glans until they are about five years of age.

This ballooning is completely natural - it is not
a sign of a phimosis.

There are two natural causes of phimosis. The
first is simple: you're just born that way. In this case, the traditional
remedy has been circumcision.

Nowadays, a more conservative approach may be
recommended, involving self-stretching of the preputial meatus (the opening of
the foreskin), or, where the foreskin simply has not separated form the glans,
the use of steroid creams to encourage the natural separation to take place. (Topical application of the
steroid cream, beta methasone valerate 0.05%.)

Circumcision should always be a last
resort. There is a less dramatic procedure which makes a slit in the foreskin,
thereby allowing it to expand move freely as it was intended to. This is called
the dorsal slit technique.

One man' stretching experience - a phimotic penis

I was the only boy who was not circumcised in my group, so I had no idea what
a penis naturally looked like, and how it worked! I did enjoy peering into the
end of my foreskin and wondering what it was all about, though!

However, by the time I was twenty, and I still hadn't seen the end of my
urethra, I began to suspect something was not as it should be.

This became more and more obvious to me as I
moved into the world of locker rooms - at school, at university, at the gym -
and sneaked a peek at other guys with intact foreskins.

None of them looked like mine, and when one day I
saw a man moving his foreskin back and forth in a kind of masturbatory daze as
he showered, I decided I wanted to get this problem (as it had now become in my
mind) sorted out.

The reason I left it so long was because I have a
long foreskin, and it naturally expanded when I got erect, so that was not
uncomfortable to masturbate.

The first time I had sex, though, was a different
matter - it was actually very uncomfortable as the foreskin moved backwards as I thrusted only as far as the tight opening over the glans.

Fortunately for me - and my sexual
partners - I did not go to the doctors. They would almost certainly have
circumcised me, even if I'd asked for a moderate circumcision which only removed
the tip of the foreskin (that's what happened to a friend of mine).

I decided -
purely off my own bat - to start stretching it, and to see if I could open out
the preputial meatus enough for me to get the foreskin comfortably back across
my glans.

All I did was to pull it back gradually during
masturbation, not even using any lube. It took six months, but the end of this
time it moved comfortably back over the glans and forward again of its own
accord.

I did pull quite hard to start with, but there
was never any real discomfort.

I think if I did this now, I'd use lube,
masturbate to orgasm and let the semen act as a lubricant as well - someone told
me that there's a chemical in semen which can help to stretch the skin.

Now, when I start to enter a sexual partner, my outer foreskin catches on the
outer part of her vulva, and this causes my glans and shaft to slip forward,
exposed out of the penile skin sheath.

The second cause of a phimosis is fungal
infection (BXO), which produces a discolored ring of tight fibrous tissue
around the end of the prepuce or foreskin. This usually means circumcision will
be needed, for BXO or Balanitis Xerotica Obliterans (BXO)
can be quite challenging to treat.

Fordyce spots are a type of sebaceous gland, the
natural oil and sweat producing glands of the skin, but of a type found only in
certain parts of the body, including the skin of the genitals. There is no cure,
but the good news is that they don't need one.

They are completely harmless, though I admit that
sometimes they can be quite disfiguring cosmetically if there are a lot of them.
However, since they are so common, no sexual partner is ever likely to comment
on them - every penis has a fair crop of them!

For the technically minded, this link has some illustration from a dermatology site. Fordyce spots
are hair free, with no hair follicles, and histology reveals a single sebaceous
gland lesion which is comprised of one or more small but mature sebaceous
lobules around a sebaceous duct, small in size, extending to the epithelial
surface of the skin.

Most of the men with this issue find it a problem
because the penis bunches up tightly when cold or anxious and this can be
uncomfortable.

Generally, heat and relaxation cause the muscles
of the penile shaft to loosen up and let the penis drop forward out of the body
cavity. In the opposite conditions, the penis can completely retract into the
body, leaving either just the glans showing or no evidence whatsoever of the
presence of the penis!

Urologists will often test for the size of a
penis by stretching it when it is flaccid - the theory being that the stretched
length of the flaccid penis is about the same size as its erect length.

This is certainly not true for men in this
category, whose erect penis may be many times longer than the small, flaccid
knob that they show when not erect.

Two retractile penises - and tight
testicles in scrotum with muscles contracted tightly

The same penis soft and erect

The same penis soft and erect

More retractile penises

The muscles responsible for this
retraction is the cremaster muscle. This is the one which pulls the testicles
back in towards the body and shortens the penis in conditions of cold.

There may be no embarrassment when a man is with
his lover, for he knows his penis will expand to its erect size, but - except in
rare cases - this issue is one which a man would not wish to display in the
locker room.

(I seem to keep referring to the locker room when
talking about penis size - and for good reason, because that is the most public
forum in which men are likely to find themselves on display in this most
sensitive of areas for the male ego!)

I have seen men with a retractile penis who were
not self-conscious about showing their bodies - and indeed, when you think about
it, why would you be self-conscious about something like this if your penis
worked normally in every other way? - but they have been few and far between.

Mostly, if a man hides his penis in the locker
room, it's likely to be because he considers himself too short for his own good!

The key thing to remember, though, is that
the size of your penis when it is flaccid is in no way a
measure of masculinity!

The average white Caucasian penis is
5.9 inches long when it is erect.

So many men have a small penis that it is in fact
in no way abnormal. The logic of averages means that some men must be smaller
than average and some must be larger than average.

Even a penis as small as four inches long when
erect is not that uncommon - by my reckonings, there must be about half a
million men in America alone with a penis that size, and in the Asian countries,
where penis size is generally smaller, a heck of a lot more.

So why is it such a problem? And what
would be "too small" anyway?

In my work with men, I have counseled a lot of
guys with penile problems - real or imagined - and the most outstanding example
of this was a man who had been born with almost no penis.

He had had surgery when he was five to increase
it in length, but the primitive methods of the time had not helped that much -
his penis was still only one inch long when he was an adult. He was on
testosterone injections for life, but he married, ran an incredibly successful
business, and later adopted two children.

He also had surgery in his late fifties to
increase his penis to two inches: an operation which transformed his life, as he
was then able to have penetrative sex with a woman - who enjoyed multiple
orgasms every time they made love.

No, this is not a joke. A penis can indeed be too
big for sex - the guy in this picture falls into the twelve inch range and I
should think his partners are scared to death when they see him naked.

While at first sight many men might think a penis as large as that might be
highly desirable, if you speak to man with a penis this size you'll soon be
disabused of the idea.

No sexual partner - man or woman - wants to be
penetrated by a penis that long. Indeed, it is impossible for many women to
accept a penis more than six inches in length into their vagina- there is simply
nowhere for it to go.

And what's worse
- there is nothing you can do about it. Not a thing. I suppose you can fuck your
partner between her buttocks or breasts - but that's not what sex is really
about, is it? Vaginal penetration is impossible.

I had a partner once who had had a boyfriend with
a nine inch penis and she said the problems started when he could only get the
condom half way down his penile shaft.

Then she could only take part of him inside her -
but, even so, she'd rather enjoyed it.

When I asked why, she said because it was
exciting to see a penis that size, but it was in fact rather difficult to enjoy
the sex when she might have her cervix bumped at any time.

A congenital defect - or difference,
if you prefer - to the normal penis. It's a developmental abnormality which
results from unknown causes but is certainly on the increase, perhaps due to
female hormones polluting the environment (e.g. the contraceptive pill hormones
in female urine get flushed into the sewage system and thence into the ocean and
rivers), or from chemicals such as plasticizers which mimic the female hormone
in the human body.

This hormonal disruption affects the development
of the male baby, or more specifically his genitals, causing the complete and
proper development of the penis to stop before it is finished.

The urethral meatus ends up opening on the shaft
of the penis somewhere below its normal point, and the glans penis may be
flattened, split or misshapen.

Some men with hypospadias develop a flattened
mushroom shaped head to the penis - and many of them have told me this can be
highly stimulating to a woman, for it rubs on her G-spot in a most arousing way.
It's not all bad news, therefore, if you have this condition!

And in fact the truth is that although the
difference form normality can be very distressing for a man, most women just
don't care about this at all.

Another support group for hypospadias can be found here. About half the men with hypospadias
tend to have a smaller than average penis, and, oddly, the other half tend to
have a penis that's larger than average.

The penis is a sensitive
organ, and there are a few things that can go wrong with it during its
development. Unfortunately, I'd also have to say that most cases of abnormal
development are due to botched circumcisions. You can see pictures
of such incidents here.

Congenital problems include hypospadias
and all its variations (chordee ,where the head of the penis bends down in
relation to the shaft), twisting of the penile shaft, bending of the penile
shaft, which may be congenitally so bad as to prevent intercourse, and require
surgery.

There's also rotation of the penis head with respect to the shaft,
a condition called malapposition.

And lastly, there is Peyronie's
disease: the penis bends in any direction because of injury, On healing, the
penis forms hard plaques in the corpus cavernosa which means it cannot expand
equally on each side - hence the bend on erection.

A skin bridge, more properly called in medical
terminology a "penile adhesion," is not the result of a poor circumcision so
much as it is a result of poor or improper care of the penis during healing
after the procedure.

Here comes the medical portion:

At birth, in a vast majority of males (about 96%) are born with the foreskin and
glans firmly attached to each other by a stratified squamous (connective) layer
of epithelial tissue (sources: ุster, J.: "Further Fate of the Foreskin:
Incidence of Preputial Adhesions, Phimosis, and Smegma among Danish Schoolboys."
Archives of Diseases in Childhood, 1968, 43; pp. 200-3; cited by
http://www.cirp.org.)

During circumcision, the glans and foreskin are forcibly separated, breaking the
aforementioned epithelial layer (a process that is quite painful).

Later,
the freshly cut flesh around the circumference of the penis after the
circumcision, if not properly kept away from the corona where adhesions are
typical or any other portion of the penis, is capable of adhering to any other
portion of the penis with which it contacts for a prolonged period of time
during the healing process.

The resulting adhesion may result in a simple bridge, under which cleaning may
become difficult but a probe may be fit (source:
http://www.jabfm.org),
smaller bridges along the shaft, or complete fusion of the shaft of the penis to
the glans/corona (source:
http://www.circumstitions.com).

Respectfully, I decline from submitting a photo, and wish to remain anonymous,
as admitting to having an abnormal penis is something of a leap of faith I do
not feel ready to undergo.

According to http://www.cirp.org/library, 15% of cases
of her 150 patients examined showed adhesions. This is the ONLY statistic on the
prevalence of skin bridges that I could find.

I will admit that this subject has become something of a personal matter for me,
but how could it not in my case?

Armed only with case studies, and my one weak
statistic, I have been trying to inform others about the side of circumcision
that they will quite probably never hear from their doctors.

On that note, I am admittedly disturbed by the
lack of statistics in this matter. There are others out there like me,
documenting their conditions and attempting to better inform the masses so that
parents may make better informed decisions in the interest of their child.

Most penile yeast infections are skin infections
on the penis. They affect uncircumcised men more than circumcised men.

When the glans is exposed, it tends to remain dry
and cooler; yeast infections need heat and moisture to thrive. If a yeast or
Candida infection gets into the urethra, men may develop symptoms similar to
those of a woman's vaginal yeast infection, with discharge from the penis and
itching, and considerable associated discomfort.

Men can get a penile yeast infection from a woman
with a vaginal yeast infection, from oral sex with a man or woman with thrush,
and from anal sex, but there are other causes, too: diabetes can play a role in promoting yeast
infection, as can antibiotics; so too can intestinal yeast overgrowth.

After Candida species have infected the skin of
the penis, treatment is needed. Otherwise, given time, the skin will harden and
crack, making erection painful. The sooner a yeast infection is treated, the
better.

Note that little white bumps on the penis are not
yeast infection but Fordyce spots: they are sebaceous glands and totally
innocuous. Similarly pearly penile papules should not be confused with yeast
infection.

Treating a Penile Yeast Infection

Diflucan or Monistat 7 may work for you, but it
may be necessary to try a variety of creams until you find the one that is most
effective for you.

Should you choose a non-medical route, natural anti-fungal
remedies include Gentian Violet, which was used widely before azole drugs cam
onto the market.

It is not toxic but works well for yeast infections, but stains
clothing and skin. Another agent is Organic Coconut Oil, which not only kills
yeast but makes a great
lubricant for women during intercourse.

Another supposedly great treatment system for home remedies for yeast infection is called
Yeast Infection No More. This is an eBook full of traditional remedies which should ensure you keep your
yeast infections stopped.
Probiotics may be helpful with penile yeast infections although keeping the
product on the skin may not be so easy - like many women, you may find that
unsweetened and natural yogurt is easier to apply.

Other things you can try are organic
Mediterranean Oregano Oil diluted in olive or coconut oil; cinnamon oil, diluted
in a carrier, and Tea Tree Oil.

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Delayed Ejaculation Need
Not Be A Problem

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